Ninjutsu for You Everybody loves Ninjas. You loved them in Mortal Kombat. You loved them when you read about them in the Magic Treehouse books (or was that just me?). And you probably loved them when they first appeared in Betrayers of Kamigawa, despite them being criminally under-supported. Their signature mechanic is, of course, Ninjutsu, and this week […]

Growing Under When it comes to building around mechanics, I like the simple ones. Forget that Prowl or Explore nonsense—I want something straightforward. Since we’re in Ravnica right now, I think I’ve got just the thing. This week on Mechanically Minded, let’s talk about Undergrowth. A nice, simple, direct mechanic. When you cast a spell or your […]

Getting a Clue The year is 2016. Shadows Over Innistrad spoilers are rolling in. I’m loving all of them. Especially this one: My favorite mechanic from Shadows was (and still is) Investigate. The flavor is sharp, and everyone loves drawing cards, but there’s even more to be done with Clues than just cracking them. For those […]

Sweetest Devotion Hello and welcome to the very first edition of Mechanically Minded, the column where we build decks around some of the coolest keyword mechanics in Magic’s history. For the inaugural edition of this column, let’s explore Banding! Kidding, kidding. For the actual first mechanic, we’ll cover Devotion. You’ll remember this mechanic most recently from Theros, though […]